A day for politics. The Alaska Legislature swung into gear Tuesday for this year’s regular session and got things going with its first clash: a fight over the timing of Gov. Sarah Palin’s State of the State address. (Click here for the text of her address.) Here’s how some of the Alaska media that were on the scene Tuesday covered the first day:

> Palin touts gas line progress (Juneau Empire): “Gov. Sarah Palin, in her second State of the State speech Tuesday, promised to plow ahead with her agenda, which includes her quest for a natural gas pipeline and personal freedom and responsibility for Alaskans.”

> Palin’s address “short on details, great on vision” (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): “A little more than a year into her first term, Gov. Sarah Palin used her second State of the State address on Tuesday to recap first-year accomplishments and defend her approach to getting a natural gas pipeline.”

> Governor makes a call for cooperation (ADN): “The Alaska Legislature began a 90-day session Tuesday with Gov. Sarah Palin feuding with the Senate president but also calling on legislators to work with her on the state's budget surplus and getting a natural gas pipeline.”

> Lawmakers face short session and a whole lot of work (The Associated Press): “Lawmakers must tackle an agenda replete with a budget to approve, an education funding system to draft and ongoing discussions on the state's gas line proposal. Most believe discussions on awarding a gas line contract will need to be dealt with in a special session.”

> Lawmakers, governor focus on ethics and progress (KTUU Channel 2): “This year's legislative session is bound to be challenging if Day 1 was any indication. For the first time in the state's history, lawmakers will attempt to get their work done in 90 days.”

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Silver lining in short session? A Juneau Empire story concerned primarily with measures put forth by the city’s all-Democratic delegation for this session — among them are measures to discourage plastic grocery bags — along the way notes that a shorter, 90-day session could work in favor of the struggle to keep the capital in Juneau.

Why? Because it’s “hard enough to do something in 90 days, but it is easier to kill something,” said Sen. Kim Elton of Juneau.

An Empire story from a few days earlier, however, noted that the economic consequences of a shorter session could be damaging to the city. If nothing else, “a shorter session will likely mean less revenue for Juneau landlords who rent to legislators, staffers and lobbyists,” according to the story.

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Lawmakers give life to Conoco Phillips plan. A Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story found lawmakers in the state House who are not quite ready to toss Conoco Phillips’ gas line proposal in the trash. The proposal, which Gov. Sarah Palin has rejected, could get a public hearing and could stir some changes in the law to clear the way for it, according to House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez.

“The Legislature does have the right to change the law if in fact a better opportunity or a different opportunity than we anticipated comes along,” Harris said. Of a like mind was Rep. Ralph Samuels, R-Anchorage, who told the paper that nothing in the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act blocked lawmakers from considering a proposal outside the AGIA process.

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Anchorage property assessments on the way. Those green cards that have a lot to say about what you’ll pay in property taxes were in the mail as of Tuesday, according to stories from KTUU Channel 2 and KTVA Channel 11. About 90,000 of them went out with data on the city’s assessment of property values throughout Anchorage.

Both stories say that most homeowners can expect to pay about $100 more in taxes this year. Information on property values and answers to frequently asked questions on property appraisals are also available from the city’s online property appraisal site.

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Eagle dies at recovery center. Another dead bald eagle has been added to the toll from the Kodiak episode involving a swarm of birds that went after a truckload of fish guts, according to a Kodiak Daily Mirror story. The story — which says wildlife officials are calling the event “the worst Kodiak bird disaster since the Exxon Valdez oil spill” — reports that the latest casualty was a bird that died overnight Monday at the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage.

“He had not been responding well and was kind of depressed,” Marry Bethe Wright, a volunteer at the bird center, said of the bird that died. “We were monitoring him very closely. People were here all night and checking on him every couple of hours.”

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Protecting polar bears. “First things first,” a Los Angeles Times editorial today says while making the argument that the Interior Department “should stick to that useful truism instead of approving oil drilling in polar bear habitat before deciding whether the bears need protection from such drilling.”

The opinion piece bemoans the delay in a federal decision on whether polar bears need protection as a threatened species and the haste in deciding to go ahead with oil and gas exploration leases in the Chukchi Sea. “Reliance on fossil fuels has been one of the major causes of the global warming that now forces the government to consider the polar bears' plight. It would be too painful an irony if the Interior Department allowed that same reliance to ravage the bears’ already diminishing habitat.”

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Online death threats anger parent. An Anchorage parent says another girl threatened his teenager on a social networking Internet site, saying she was going to get a gun and shoot her, according to a KTUU Channel 2 story. And the parent wants the Anchorage School District to do more to protect his youngster. The episode points to a growing problem surfacing on MySpace and other sites of online bullying, according to the story.

The Anchorage parent told the station he’s gone to court with the issue. But Anchorage School District superintendent Carol Comeau said school officials need proof before they can act. “You can give them a warning saying we think you did it but we can't prove it for sure, and if they're denying it, it's really kind of about all we can do,” she said.

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Still walking. Rosie Swale Pope, who struggled mightily with the Alaska portion of her journey, is pressing on with her around-the-world-on-foot trek, turning up most recently in Nova Scotia. The Truro Daily News reports that Swale Pope, who began her trip from Tenby, Wales, to raise cancer awareness, plans to end the North American leg of her journey next week and will challenge Greenland and Iceland next.

“It’s a very hard journey,” she told the newspaper, but “I am doing something I like.”

Several ADN stories marked her progress in Alaska, including one reporting on an Alaska National Guard rescue that lifted her off an island in the frozen Yukon River after she became hobbled by frostbite.

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Bookworms, look elsewhere. The Wasilla Public Library has temporarily suspended buying new books and other materials because of a budget shortfall, a Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman story says. The freeze will stay in place until Wasilla can come up with a funding plan to make up for the decline in a Mat-Su Borough block grant.

“It’s hard to meet the information needs of patrons and meet our mission without being able to purchase new material,” library director KJ Martin-Albright told the paper.

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Bold thief targets troopers. A short item in The Nome Nugget reports that a thief, who apparently remained in the Alaska State Troopers office on Front Street after the last officer left, made off with about $40 worth of stuff from the break room.